4.40: Skin Deep

I pulled my right hand away from the grater, swearing, and managed to catch myself before automatically sticking the bleeding wound in my mouth. I was only grating oak bark, but it was good practice to avoid sticking one’s hand in one’s mouth at all when making potions.

I was too distracted to be making potions, anyway. It had been a long time since I’d managed to grate the skin off my own hand. Rather a lot of the skin was missing, but only the skin. I rinsed it off and doused it in healing potion.

It stung like iodine. I shook my hand, bewildered. Usually, the skin healing potion didn’t feel like anything; a slight itch, at most. I double-checked the bottle; it was the right potion. A bad batch? No, I’d used this one before without problems, and it wouldn’t expire for years.

I wrapped the wound to keep it clean and flexed my hand. Already, the burn was dying down. And it was… familiar, now that I’d had time to consider it. Oh… it wasn’t the potion that was burning. It was Kylie’s magic, being disrupted by the foreign magic.

Max must be right about my increasing sensitivity. How much of Kylie’s magic was I holding? Was this dangerous? Would it affect how the potion worked?

No… no, it should be fine. Kylie’s magic was staying out of the way, so the potion should work fine. And if it didn’t, well, I’d just go to Malas. He had some of the most powerful creation magic in the world. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but he should be able to heal my skin.

Actually, come to think of it… I could probably use this. I’d been making a pretty big assumption about something that would be nice to actually, properly confirm.

I cleared up the workshop and headed back to my room. Some rifling through my drawers found what I needed; the samples I’d taken from the tentacle thing in the lake. They’d ended up back in my possession, somehow. I picked up the jar with samples suspended in lake water and frowned at it. It was just a handful of severed tentacles; I had no idea if they could still do anything, detached from the main machine, or whatever it was. But if this didn’t work, I could go back to the lake and try it with the main machine, I supposed. I really didn’t want to do that.

The thing about my skin healing potion was that it, well, healed skin. Most people thought of it as a wound closer; you put it on an open wound, and soon it closed up. That was how it tended to be used, because injury to the skin usually involved an open wound, but it didn’t have to.

I thoroughly doused my left (uninjured) hand and forearm in my healing potion, then sprayed on an inert oil from my potion kit. It was just a barrier, to keep water-based potions off the hands (or in this case, to keep one on). Then I gritted my teeth and stuck my hand in the jar.

The tentacle fragments wrapped themselves around my fingers, as expected. They held tight, cutting into the skin. I prepared to wait.

I didn’t have to. The burn was instant, like a sustained electric shock through my fingers. Within seconds, it was radiating up my hands, and then my forearm. I yanked my hand back, knocking the jar over and spilling empowered water across the floor. The tentacles immediately released, but the burn through my hand only increased. I gritted my teeth and waited, trying to focus on where, specifically, the pain was. On where Kylie’s magic was being interrupted.

It was only a few seconds before the pain faded, but I had the results I wanted. They were exactly what I’d expected. The magic had been interrupted in a few long lines branching from my fingertips, about as far up my arm as the length of the tentacle fragments. As if the potion had had to heal where the tentacles had sent filaments to burrow through the lower levels of my skin. Presumably towards my heart.

The first time this had happened, the tentacle thing had had me by the legs. It had gripped me tight enough to cut into my skin. That’s how it must have gotten in, burrowing up to the spell in my heart, binding it there for… some reason. I’d never been the most careful person when it came to my body; the damage would have been invisible to Malas, tangled up among the evidence of dozens of other long-healed injuries, except in the one place I’d taken great care to never damage. The area around my heart.

I’d reasoned all of this already, but it was nice to have some confirmation that I could blame the tentacle machine for this. I was sick of jumping to conclusions that would be proven wrong a month later.

Still had no idea why, though. Someone had built it to do this. Judging by the condition of the skeleton we’d found, it probably would have kept carving into me from the skin down, through every part of my body, if it had had time. Why do that? Why make something that would do that?

This had to be important, somehow. And there had to be some way I could explain it to Max without triggering my stupid geas. It wasn’t fair; Max knew about curses, there was nothing nefarious in me discussing mine with him. It had nothing to do with the threat that had gotten me saddled with the geas in the first place.

Did talking about the binding even count as talking about ‘the nature of curses’? Surely not, right? Just mentioning stuff tangentially related to how curses worked shouldn’t count, should it? But therein was the problem; the mere fact that I had doubts might mean that it did count. If I went messing around with this stuff, I’d probably end up tying myself up in a bunch of restrictions. I had to be cautious.

Even though it was stupid.

Hmm. Max was smart. I could probably get him on the right track without alluding to my curse at all. I’d have to think on it.

I wasn’t sure how long it would take to heal so much skin, so I left my grated hand wrapped up overnight. When I pulled the bandages off the next morning, something was wrong. The wounds were healed, but the hand felt… stiff. When I straightened it, the skin stretched and pulled. I was sure I couldn’t pull my fingers back nearly as far as I should be able to.

Hmm. Maybe Kylie’s magic had interfered with the potion after all? Or maybe I’d grated deeper than I’d thought, and cut up something beneath the skin. I balled and straightened my fingers a few times, weighing my options. Yeah; I was going to have to go to Malas. This had never happened with me using the skin healing potion before, and if it was something that might be permanent… a damaged hand was a real problem for a potioncrafter. I needed all the dexterity I could get.

Malas’ weary ‘what have you done this time?’ expression at the sight of me was familiar. I didn’t bother explaining. I just held out my hand.

He didn’t even bother to magically scan it. He pulled my fingers open, rubbed a thumb over the skin on the palm and sighed. It’s hard to tell on someone without pupils, but I’m pretty sure he rolled his eyes. “How long ago was the injury?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Potion?”

“Yeah.”

“How much skin did you lose?”

I shrugged. “It’s just skin.”

“How much?”

I shrugged again and indicated the size of the missing patch, a little over a third of my palm.

Malas sighed again. “You do know that your body has limitations when it comes to healing, yes?”

“I had a skin healing potion, I don’t see why – ”

“Ah, yes, and as we know, magic always solves all problems perfectly. Human skin is really good at healing large, shallow wounds or small, deep wounds. It is not good at healing large, deep wounds. If you injure the lower layers over too big an area, you remove the very cells that make the new skin, and the ‘template’ they work on. A potion won’t fix that.”

“Can you fix it?”

“Yes. Fortunately for you, fabricating that kind of template is exactly what my spell is specialised to do. How did you lose the skin?”

“Cheese grater.”

“You removed almost half of your palm down to the lower layers of skin grating cheese?!”

“Of course not! I was grating bark.”

“How did you manage to grate off that much skin? How did you not notice?”

I shrugged. “I was lost in thought.”

Malas regarded me thoughtfully. “What’s your pain tolerance like?”

“I… don’t know? Normal? I mean, I hurt myself a lot, but I feel it.”

“Recently?”

“What?”

“Have you noticed recent changes in your pain tolerance?”

“I don’t… think so?”

“Your coordination? Your reflexes? Are you clumsier than normal, or slower to react to things?”

“No? Why?”

“You haven’t noticed a change in your ability to notice physical sensations? Maybe not noticing hot or cold temperatures as easily? Having difficulty noticing texture changes as quickly? Anything like that?”

“No! What’s this about?”

“I’m just trying to figure out how somebody could injure themselves that much before noticing and pulling their hand away. I want to run some reflex tests with you later. Check for nerve damage.”

“I’m sorry, nerve damage?!”

He shrugged. “It’s probably nothing. I’m just being cautious. With our familiarity link…”

I relaxed. He didn’t have any reason to think anything was wrong with me, he was just being paranoid over the human familiar thing again, like anything I did that was slightly unusual was a clear sign that I was about to die immediately.

Malas held out his hand for my hand again. I gave it to him; I knew what was next. He’d scan the area (which would feel horrible) so he’d know how to apply the magic, then he’d apply the magic, and we’d be done.

He took my hand, and pins and needles shot up my arm. I swore and pulled away.

Malas stared at me, wide-eyed. “What under the seven points of power was that?”

“Sorry,” I said, rubbing my arm. “Sorry. I didn’t brace for your scan well enough. It caught me off guard.”

“You’ve never reacted to a scan nearly that harshly.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a long time since you’ve scanned me.” I wriggled my hand around. The pain wasn’t that bad once I was used to it. It felt almost exactly like Max channelling too much power through my arm. I probably should’ve expected that.

“So your reactions to magic are getting worse?! How long has this been going on?”

“I don’t know. I only noticed recently.”

“Kayden, this is exactly the sort of thing you’re supposed to tell me! I can’t monitor your safety with Kylie’s spell if you don’t inform me of changes!”

“Max says it’s probably fine! He thinks it’s just – ”

“Ah, yes, well, your apprentice friend thinks a random change in your near-universally-fatal experimental magical bond is ‘probably fine’, so I guess there’s nothing to worry about, then! No need to involve your doctor! It’s probably fine!”

“Okay, okay, I get it! I’ll tell you right away if anything else changes.”

“Thank you.”

“Although I don’t expect any new fun changes within a mere six months anyway, so I’m sure it won’t come up.”

“What’s six months got to do with anything?”

“I’m going to have to go with Kylie to Fionnrath next semester. Because of the familiarity bond?”

Malas froze. “Kylie’s chosen to leave us?”

I snorted. “‘Chosen’ is a bit much, don’t you think? It’s not like the High Council is giving her a choice.”

“I… see,” Malas said, neutrally. Very carefully neutrally, in fact. “Well. I wish you both the best.” He stared into space for a bit, jaw tight, then shook himself out of it. “Let’s deal with your hand, and then I want you here for the day for observation. I need to run some reflex and homeostatic tolerance tests, and because it’s on you, I need to run them without the use of my spell to get accurate results. This is going to take a while.”

“I have plans – ”

“Cancel them. You’re under observation in hospital today. Hold on, I need to get some anaesthetic.”

Anaesthetic? Malas had never used anaesthetic on me before. He generally didn’t bother; his spell wasn’t painful and usually killed most of the pain in whatever he was patching up. He was probably worried that Kylie’s magic would make his magic painful for me. Fair enough; I could take a pill or whatever.

He came back with a needle.

I shrank back. “Uh… why do I need that, exactly?”

He gave me a pitying look. “Kayden, if you want me to give your skin a proper template to heal on, I need to remove the incorrectly healed skin first.”

He was going to skin my hand. Or a good section of my palm, at least. I shrank back further. “You know what, maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

He shrugged. “It’s your choice. If we leave it, there’s a good chance that the skin will stretch out and return to normal on its own. But there’s a good chance that it won’t. There’s a good chance that it will always be tight, and be easily damaged, and heal poorly in the future.”

I couldn’t take that risk. I swallowed. “What do I have to do?”

“Just hold still. I’d recommend closing your eyes. You won’t feel it.”

I closed my eyes and thrust my hand out.

Malas took my arm gently. “You’re about to feel a little jolt, like an electric shock,” he told me. He stuck the needle into my forearm.

I felt a little jolt. And then I couldn’t feel my hand.

Eyes squeezed shut, I heard him get up and fetch tools, and tried not to think about what they might be. I heard water and movement as he thoroughly cleaned my hand, and then some other odd sounds that I silently willed myself to believe didn’t sound anything like slicing meat, not even a tiny bit, and a little bit later, he said, “Alright, we’re done.”

“Can I open my eyes?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I did. My hand looked completely normal, except for the fact that quite a lot of the palm was a bright, vaguely luminous blue. It was still completely numb, of course, but the sight wasn’t disturbing in the least. I’d seen Malas’ magic on plenty of wounds before, including many of my own. This was just… a magically treated wound. No problem.

Malas got up, picking up a little kidney-shaped metal dish. I glanced inside to see a flap of something bloody and immediately jerked my eyes away.

“Alright,” he said. “Bed. I need to set up some tests.”

I spent the rest of the day being prodded, asked various questions about what I was physically feeling, and having lights shined in my eyes and stuff. Everything showed up normal. Apart from the higher amount of magic in my body, Malas could find nothing to be alarmed about.

I’d told him that everything was probably fine.